


Time and Time Enough

by OldEmeraldEye



Series: Key to the Universe [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Honor Harrington Series - David Weber
Genre: Cross-Posted on Twisting the Hellmouth, Dawn Summers is The Key, Era: the First Havenite-Manticoran War, First Chapter Covers Same Time Span as Previous Work, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-11-02 07:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20664536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldEmeraldEye/pseuds/OldEmeraldEye
Summary: Security breach at Harrington House. Nimitz and Harrington Guard attending.





	Time and Time Enough

Between extended rescue and damage control operations at Harrington Steading’s airport, the aftermath of the duel on the floor of the Keys - the effects of which are swiftly rippling across Grayson on the nets - and their Steadholder out defending the planet from overwhelming odds yet again, the security forces of Harrington House are not concentrating their attention on patrolling the house and its associated areas. Being Grayson’s newest Steading, (the first new Steading created in centuries) the reserves that they have to draw on to fulfill their duties are smaller than they need to keep up with the sudden demand, although growing at a pace unprecedented before the infusion of Manticorian technology reinvigorated and revolutionized the playing field.  
  
Not that that means they’re allowing holes to develop in the security they provide the House and its skeleton staff, far from it – they have the perimeter under human eye and sensors both, and the readouts of the extensive sensor system scattered throughout are manned with all due diligence – but there isn’t anyone there that needs to be guarded. Besides the fact that there’s no way to get into the garden without first breaching several other, more essential areas of the house that are already being monitored and the way that their numbers are stretched far too thin for men to be wasted on make-work, the garden is not all that strategically important in situations that don’t include prolonged sieges.  
  
Safe and secure in her slumber, the Steading’s latest visitor goes unnoticed. Dawn dreams of marshmallows toasty electric sheets, undisturbed by the critters running through the undergrowth near her bench.  
  
  
The long slow battle between the People’s Republic of Haven and the Protectorate of Grayson plays out across the emptiness of space and, microseconds later, on the grav. There is nothing those on the ground can do nothing but wait. The opposing force is overwhelming, but they have no doubt their Steadholder will face her Test well. Many of them subscribe, or at least lend an open ear, to the rumor spreading that she is as Beloved of the Tester as Saint Austin was before her. Few would dare argue loudly against it in the face of her achievements, both in defense and improvement of their planet. Those that did would have, as of the previous afternoon, found themselves in the company of unrepentant killers of children and must be left to face their test as they will.  
  
Several tension filled hours after the first alert sounded, their quiet faith is rewarded, and the last of the Peep forces under the command of Theisman break for the hyper-limit on a near reciprocal of their original course. An eternity later, when the wedges of the ships disappear from sensors into hyper, the shattered remnants of what had been Grayson Space Navy battle Squadron One that morning split apart. LACs and functional light cruisers remained to continue search and rescue, on the spot patching and repair, while the SDs GNS _Courageous,_ GNS _Magnificent_ and GNS _Terrible,_ Admiral Harrington’s flagship, made their slow return to the yards in orbit. Unlikely as it is for a second enemy force to attack the system so soon after, they systems current lack of defense in the middle of a war with the second biggest navy in human space is unacceptable.  
  
There is little for an Admiral to do aboard ship in the aftermath of battle that their flag captain couldn’t do on their own initiative (which Captain Yu has more than enough of) and more than enough for GSN’s second ranked officer to be while affairs are dealt with. Adding to the fact that Honor has either averted or kicked off a constitutional crisis by executing a fellow head of state, and survived two assignation attempts in the last two days, her Steading needs her.  
  
The return to the surface is itself relatively nondescript, on both ends of the transfer. What shattered hulls of BatRon One that can maintain propulsion don’t want to damage themselves, or the scatterings of life pods any further through excessive haste, and the ground-side response is no less subdued. The past hours would have been enough to mentally exhaust even those who had no part in events, and Harrington Steading has had months of escalating tensions to add to the effect.  
  
For lack of intact spaceport in Harrington, the _Terrible’s_ pinace slashes through the atmosphere to touch down smoothly in Austin City, only to transfer passengers straight to the waiting aircar and Harrington. The Protector himself meets with the group as they transfer to converse with his Champion, and Benjamin cannot help but wince. Honor had looked on deaths door on the floor of the Keys, and Benjamin would have spared her further exertion even then. Now she has won not one but three battles for the fate of his world this day, and her exhaustion shows. She is stiff and slow as she moves and even Nimitz, usually a boundless source of energy, is subdued.  
  
  
The sun is barely visible above the horizon, illuminating the double domes that cover Harrington City and House, when Nimitz alerts them to their visitor. He and Armsman Tomkins, recruited on the expedition to provide access through stubborn, human designed doorways, are on a stroll through the greenhouse while Honor, having slept during transit and dodged concerted attempts from both McGuiness and Andrew LaFollet to get her to convalesce properly, swings right back into the paperwork that has been generated and accumulated in her absence. After hours of confinement - although in all truth the experience had been far less restrictive than the module he was forced to use prior to being gifted the first ‘cat skinsuit by Paul Tankersly, it was still not entirely comfortable for prolonged periods - he needs to stretch his limbs and breathe clean, fresh air.  
  
Given Grayson’s heavy metal concentration, and its effect it has on the atmosphere, soil and biosphere that offworlders have no adaptions for, there is only one place to go, thoughtfully stocked with an assortment of small Spinixian wildlife should he.  
After he stretches and limbers his way up a small near-oak, Nimitz settles in a perch, enjoying the small artificial breeze. Pricks his ears, searching for the distinctive sound of chipmunk, then his head snaps round so suddenly Tomkins is reaching for the butt of his pulser before his conscious mind registers the movement, and he takes off in a blur of cream and grey.  
  
Dawn comes to with a weight on her chest, pushing her ribs down till if feels like they're touching her spine. She blinks awake enough to come face to face with green eyes, fur and whiskers that brush her cheeks. Cat, she identifies. Miss Kitty. Better than any alarm clock, and cuter too. Even without looking, Dawn can tell it’s still too early for her to wake up, so her freer hand comes up to give her a halfhearted pat as Dawn wriggles around till she’s comfortable again, and she is about to slip right back to sleep when the colour, additional weight and feeling of rather too many feet for a good old fashioned terrestrial cat works its way through fuzzy thoughts of racing cheese to get to her attention.  
  
That wakes her up _quick._  
  
Dawn’s wide eyes are greeted with cheerful bleeking by the ... it still looks like a cat, so, okay, she’ll call the ... cat-thing a cat .... and she’s going to go ahead and call the a ring of men in green uniform surrounding her a problem. More military style than Robin Hood or fairies, even if she could make a killer joke about Men in Tights. Which would be more of a difference if what Dawn’s fairly sure were fairies hadn’t arrested her a day or two ago. All in all, the situation she’s in is not of the good. Dawn’s hair is probably a mess too. And the rest of her doesn’t have much chance of being much better after hell and fields and caves with missing dragons have all happened to it either.  
  
Huh. Now that Dawn’s got her eyes open she can tell that the plants here are weird too. That one looks like an oak, but the other trees, and, now that she’s looking, those bushes over there too, are all strange. Dawn doesn’t know enough about trees to know what about them is tingling at her radar, but still. Weird.  
  
And the definitely not leprechauns army men are still here. Great. Dawn had hoped they were a figment of her imagination, but wishes were ... things that she didn’t do. The cat thing is definitely real though, no doubt about that.  
  
At least they look human. For a maybe demon dimension, could have ended up in a worse place. There might even be more food.  
  
“Um. Hi?”


End file.
